You'll die a lot in DayZ. After a (hopefully) successful respawn, you have to go through the same routine: Run for hours, survive until you find something useful, head to your favorite location for military gear, and, if you're still alive, with guns and enough ammo in your pocket you might finally feel safe.

Here's the whole process in the form of a flowchart by TK. It's pretty accurate—you can see it takes a lot of time to finally engage in a firefight (make sure to left click to enlarge):